Well, the first words out of my mouth when opening boxes and taking out parts was WOW! and OH MY GOD! You see, I had been looking at the pictures of the Grosvenor Hall in the DHE catalog for 14 months and I already knew it’s dimensions. Still, this knowledge didn’t prepare me for what I would see when I opened up all the boxes; especially the ones with the components. When seeing the balcony, pillars, and window sizes I was stunned! The pictures on their website and in their catalog don’t do this dollhouse justice. For example, the windows that come with the kit are the largest and most beautiful windows I’ve ever seen in a kit. Each interior door has beautiful pediments at the top of them. They even packed brass doorknobs for all their doors…something I’ve never seen done in kits before. The decorative exterior touches are truly unique. The English sure know how to design a dollhouse!

My overall first impression of the boxes and packing methods was a good one. It seems DHE covered all the bases here. I was surprised to see such a large house come out of such small boxes. I do, however, have one piece of constructive criticism in regards to the packing methods used for the basement kit components. Let’s compare it to the main house components box; specifically the box that contains the interior doors.

The box with the main house interior doors was exceptionally packed. Each interior door was on its side with a small styrofoam block separating it from the next door, and so on.

With the components box that contained the basement interior doors, the doors were lying flat and on top of each other with no cushion between each door or on top of them. All but one door was broken in some form or another, despite the fact that the box they were in was completely intact with no damage done to it.

My suggestion to DHE would be to pack the basement doors in the same fashion as the doors for the main house. Now don’t get me wrong, the fact that these doors were broken didn’t reflect negatively, because as luck would have it, the broken pieces were “whole”. Which means, nothing splintered. The breakage was “joint” breakage, or in other words…they broke in places where they were glued and were ‘clean’ breaks. So it will be extremely easy to put everything back together. And all broken pieces were accounted for; nothing missing.

I did a dry build of the basement last night and am extremely pleased with how ‘easy’ it went together! The instructions are EXTREMELY well written so that even a beginner could assemble this house. I can honestly say, these are the best instructions I’ve ever seen for a dollhouse kit. They are more like a well-written book, rather than a bunch of paper stapled together. Another nice touch included with the kits is a pack of postcards featuring the Grosvenor Hall to send out to friends and family should I want to “announce” my wonderful new toy. Very clever!

Tonight, I will prime all the basement pieces and use spray texture where I need it. Once dry, I’ll grab the glue and get busy. Tomorrow I’ll be going to Lowe’s and getting my latex paint colors for the exterior. I suspect that sometime next week I’ll be headed down to Norms Dollhouse, my local mini shop, to get all the fun stuff to complete it such as wallpaper, flooring, lights, and ceiling decorations.

So far, I’m very excited and pleased with the product. I couldn’t be happier. DHE pulled out all the stops with this house. Personally, I don’t see how they could top it!

Hi Marie, I love your blog. It is so lovely to see step by step, the processes you have experienced. I have just ordered Grosvenor Hall. I can’t seem to find out from pictures how you get into the back rooms of the basement when it is all finished. Is there another way in (ie. from the side of the house) or are we only meant to see through the door, looking in from the front of the house? Trying to forward plan! What I would really like to do, is to take out that partition to make one long kitchen from front to back. Your thoughts would be really helpful x